As anarchist communists we fight for a world without leaders, where power is shared equally amongst communities, and people are free to reach their full potential. We do this by supporting working class resistance to exploitation and oppression, organise alongside our neighbours and workmates, host informative events, and produce publications that help make sense of the world around us.

Since the Iranian election on June 12th hundreds of thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets to protest the results of the election, widely believed to have been rigged to ensure victory for the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And there is good reason to believe that the hard-line and reactionary President was not the victor – not only were there reports of missing ballots and coerced voting on behalf of the Ahmadinejad campaign but Iran also has a strong history of rigged elections. It’s all part and parcel of the single-Party dictatorship in Iran: any show of democracy is a façade.

In recent weeks, we have seen a series of demonstrations and protests carried out by a large amount of the Tamil population in Britain around Parliament. The protests were the result of the ongoing civil war between the ruling Sinhalese state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), more commonly known as the Tamil Tigers. On Sunday 5th April, the Sri Lankan Armed forces launched a chemical gas attack in a so-called “designated safe zone”, an area where more than 1500 civilians, including many children, were present in at the time. Recently, the Sri Lankan government accepted a two-day ceasefire with the Tamil Tigers, although rejected a call for a permanent ceasefire.

Israel’s brutal attack on the Gaza strip has elicited widespread revulsion, and has led to protests across Britain and the world. It is clear that the Israeli state has committed atrocities which anyone with an ounce of humanity would seek an end to. Its savage bombing of one of the most densely populated places on earth has resulted in over a thousand deaths. Nowhere is safe – Mosques, schools and UN sites have been attacked by the IDF. Even by the “civilised” standards of warfare between nation-states, which allow for a reasonable degree of “collateral damage”, several incidents stand out for their brutality.

The Killing of 15 year old Alexis-Andreas Grigoropoulos in Athens, Greece was cold blooded, unprovoked murder. Alexis was murdered by someone working for the state, a policeman, who we are lead to believe are there to keep order and help the public. Of course, it is our rulers and their colleagues in the mainstream media who need us to believe that that is what the police are there to do. We Anarchists, however, are fully aware of the purpose of the state, we hear regularly of police and state corruption and abuse of power and it is the mainstream media who keep that information from the majority of the public. The mainstream media and those working for states and big corporations around the world claim that those who protest riot and mobilise autonomously are a minority of crazed anarchists who want to create chaos and destroy anything and everything. They want everyone to believe that we anarchists want chaos, insanity, everyman for himself, back to year zero, a mad nihilistic sect who want to create a society akin to fascism. They want us to believe this because they need us to believe that without them, without the state; the police, the military, the courts, the government and capitalism there would be chaos. That without our noble, powerful and bold leaders we would be helpless, vulnerable and in panic, back to the stone-age, our great civilisation crumbled to dust. However as events have shown us the total opposite is true.

Most people in Israel will remember one thing about the protest later today (Sat 3/1/2009): that the organizers went to the Supreme Court in order to make sure they are allowed to present a Palestinian flag.

The following text was received from an anarchist activist living in the Middle East. It has been edited slightly for clarity, but is largely as written by an activist on the ground in the Middle East. For obvious reasons we publish it here anonymously.

The unrest in Greece following the killing of 16 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos has held the attention of the world and electrified the anarchist movement internationally. In the UK, solidarity actions and demonstrations have taken place in London, Leeds, Brighton, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh. The Greek embassy in London was blockaded, and there were tussles with police during a demonstration in Dalston. Internationally, solidarity actions and demos took place in Mexico, the US, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, France, Germany, Belgium, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Italy, Ireland, Croatia, Finland and Canada. The ruling class is vocal about the threat of the conditions in Greece spreading throughout Europe, and unsurprisingly anarchists are being presented as “dark forces” stirring discontent behind the scenes. But the widespread sympathy for the anarchists amongst youth in Greece has thrust the ideas into the spotlight, and represents the possibility of advancing ideas about creating real freedom and community as viable, current and living ideas

The following statement comes from the Russian section of the Anarcho-Syndicalist International of Workers’ Associations (IWA), the Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists (KRAS). Along with the ex-USSR anarchist federation Autonomous Action, who have also signed up to the statement, they have the best anti-nationalist analysis coming out of Russia in the current period.

February and March in Armenia saw a disputed presidential election (19/2/2008) followed by eleven days of demonstrations in the capital Yerevan, broken up by tanks, police attacks and the imposition of a State of Emergency (1/3/2008). Eight people, including a child, were killed by police and around 100 were injured including 33 police. An apparently unrelated border fire-fight on 4/3/08 in the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, disputed with neighbouring state of Azerbaijan with whom Armenia is still technically at war, broke a ceasefire agreed in 1994, killing 12 Armenian conscripts.

As anarchist communists we fight for a world without leaders, where power is shared equally amongst communities, and people are free to reach their full potential. We do this by supporting working class resistance to exploitation and oppression, organise alongside our neighbours and workmates, host informative events, and produce publications that help make sense of the world around us.